When the Reverend Babbington dies suddenly at a cocktail party, his death is initially written off as a tragic but natural seizure. But when another cocktail party claims psychiatrist Bartholomew Strange, Poirot investigates.
The Story In Three Act Tragedy
Hercule Poirot attends a dinner party thrown by renowned stage actor Sir Charles Cartwright and witnesses the sudden death of the Reverend Babbington. A physician, Sir Bartholomew Strange, is also in attendance and, upon examining the body, declares the death natural.
But then Strange, himself, dies suddenly at another cocktail party. At this point, Charles Cartwright convinces another guest, Mr. Satterthwaite, and a young woman Cartwright is smitten with, to team up and investigate the apparent murders. When both of the dead men are ultimately found to have died of nicotine poisoning, Poirot joins Cartwright and Satterthwaite in their informal investigation.
My Thoughts On Three Act Tragedy
Once again, Agatha Christie demonstrates that she is more than capable of producing a perfectly good mystery with or without our favorite Belgian detective. (Although Poirot attends the first fatal cocktail party, he doesn’t become enmeshed in the investigation until weeks (and several chapters) later. Having him enter the mystery so late injected a feeling of freshness into the series and challenged his “little gray cells” by forcing them to work on two of the three murders weeks after they were committed. The lack of Poirot early in the investigation will annoy some readers but I thought Christie did a marvelous job.
What she didn’t do such a marvelous job with, though, was Poirot’s matchmaking. Yes, he’s back at it and, once again, it feels slapdash–as if Christie needed to pawn a young woman off on the nearest warm-blooded man. Perhaps she was writing to her audience’s taste for romance, but the continuing pairing of young women with romantic partners is irksome–and close to becoming insulting.
And while we’re on the subject of young female characters, the Egg character made me want to throw my headphones out the window. Was it ever explained why Hermione’s nickname is Egg? If it was, I don’t remember it, but I cringed every single time anyone uttered the name.
Critics of the day were generally positive in their reviews and I agree. Incidentally, this is one of the few Poirot novels in which I managed to guess the villain. Bonus points for me.
My version of Three Act Tragedy was narrated by Hugh Fraser, who did a marvelous job, as always.
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Lisa Barger 
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